Intertextuality and the Quest for Literary Energy

Abstract

The literary qualities and affinity with fiction that are the hallmarks of the genre are further analysed in masterpieces by Hugo, Stendhal, Nerval, and Dumas. A profound connection is revealed between these authors’ various quests for energy and the turn of these narratives towards embedded fiction. Notoriously cavalier in their practice, Romantic writers mostly preferred to entertain than to report in depth on the popular roots of nations and communities. But however unsatisfactory as ethnographies their works are, these nevertheless prove to have had potential because of the particular balance sought between different components of travel writing. Romantics had little wish to sacrifice their imaginative freedom to being either scientists or journalists. However, at its best their creativity allowed some to find an essentially promising combination of description and the retelling of what they had learned and guessed about the historical and personal narratives of other cultures.